


bottom of the river

by Quilly



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, What-If, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:19:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4975123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Handmaid watches the Sufferer die and reflects on a different path that could have been taken to get to this night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bottom of the river

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr request dump. feeding my addiction to this pairing, which is awful and never happy. fic is named after the song that prompted it

The Handmaid is one of her many names, as many names as timelines she travels. She flits like a butterfly, taking sips from each thread of possibility, busily plucking at the ones she wants to create the desired outcome.

In some of these threads of hers, she sips and tastes warmth and tenderness, so unlike the chill and rage she’s been cultivating for millennia. She keeps a memory of them, a tiny rip in the corner of where her heart used to be for all the tears she never shed. It is not her job to mourn, to remember, but it keeps the deadness at bay for a little longer.

She examines them now and then, and as she watches a troll scream his life away on the flogging jut while smoke rises from his flesh, she plucks at one in particular, a “what if” that somehow makes the horror in front of her worse.

So much would have been different, she muses, if, say, the giant currently grinning in smug satisfaction had ever truly met the troll on the jut. If the giant, this prince, this holy clown, had passed the lowly rebel and preacher on the road, if he was in the right mood, if their eyes met at the right moment. Ifs are deadlier than steel. Still, she has a moment, so she explores the memory.

In one life apart from this one, Kurloz Makara meets Kankri Vantas and the stars bless their meeting. It’s pale serendipity at its finest, straight out of a Troll Taylor Swift song. There’s pining and flushed glances and at least eight fretful murderous rampages. The details aren’t important.

That the troll known as the Signless is destined for execution never changes, not given what she’s done to the past, but in this thread, rather than laughing, the Grand Highblood holds his beloved’s hands with gentle reverence, swears the fealty of a devoted moirail. Kurloz makes his choice, and it is no less bloody, no less full of tragedy. He sides with the heretic. He bundles Kankri up in his arms and thinks to stand against the Empire. He believes in his will conquering all. He believes in happy endings for himself. In many ways, Kurloz Makara will always be more child than man.

They die clasping hands, in that timeline. It’s the one mercy the Handmaid can see in such a fate.

It’s kinder for them both, she thinks as the body is unchained and stripped. Kindnesses are not allowed in her line of work. But if ever she was allowed one, not letting either know what they could’ve been to the other is it.

The moment ends. The Handmaid shrugs. She goes back to work.


End file.
